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Good Afternoon. Here is a great thought for the day:

Discipline can mean different things to different people. To Vince Lombardi, it meant hard work and sacrifice. Hard work isn't just the number of hours invested or the blisters and bruises incurred. Hard work is discipline, the kind of focused effort that develops self-control. Discipline, born of hard work, helps you make the hard decisions. It helps you embrace the pain associated with change. It helps you stay on track in the face of stress, pressure, and fear.

Discipline is also sacrifice, giving up one thing for the sake of another. Achievement involves choices and choices mean sacrifice. Despite what today's advertisements tell us, you can't have it all. If you decide to get to work an hour earlier to get your paperwork done before the phone starts ringing, you must either sacrifice an hour of sleep, or go to bed an hour earlier (even if that means skipping your favorite late night TV program).

Study the great performers in any field; music, theater, sports — and you will find they all possess an enormous degree of discipline, a sense of duty. They have learned self-control and they exercise it. Perhaps one of the world's greatest violinists, Itzhak Perlman said it best, when a woman came up to him after one of his concerts at Carnegie Hall and said "Mr. Perlman, I would give my life to be able to play like you." His response: "I did."

All too often our culture celebrates success without any sweat. Our media tend to focus on people who achieve their goals in a seemingly effortless way — the "overnight success." There are no overnight successes! "No one who shuns the blows and the dust of battle wins a crown," said St. Basil. All those people we celebrate for their effortless success have actually put a lot of hard work and sacrifice into preparing for their moment of victory. Yes, they may make it look easy, they may even talk in a way that makes their achievement sound inevitable. But if you look and listen carefully, you will see that just below the surface lies hard work and sacrifice.

"Winning is not everything — but making the effort to win is."

- Vince Lombardi

Have a wonderful day.

"Each morning is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When the sun rises tomorrow this day will be gone forever, in its place will be something you have left — may it be something good. Follow your heart, it knows what to do."

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